16

Oliver Bowen

May 21, 2030. Washington, D.C.

With each swing of his arms, Oliver could feel his underarms gliding on slick sweat. He was short of breath, as if he were sprinting to the war room instead of walking.

A dozen or so people were talking in low tones, clumped here and there around the huge circular room, waiting for the meeting to start. The war room was built like an amphitheater, with the center the lowest point, and each subsequent ring of seats and electronics a few steps higher. Oliver spotted Ariel silently working her screen and took a seat beside her.

She looked up, nodded once, went back to work.

“Can you fill me in?”

Ariel stopped working. “I figured you knew more than I did. Five isn’t keeping you updated?”

“Five does nothing but hurl insults at me, on the rare occasions when he deigns to speak to me at all.”

Before Ariel could respond, President Wood entered, flanked by Secretary of Defense Oteri, Secretary of State Nielsen, and his senior advisor, his brother Carmine. He raised his voice to be heard, showing no interest in sitting.

“The starfish are massing around the cities housing defender production facilities. Every single facility. We don’t have nearly as many defenders as we’d like, but unless someone in here says something to change my mind, I’m going to advise Premier Chandar to release what we have immediately. Their primary mission will be to defend those production facilities.”

Raising his shoulders, the president waited, looking around the room at individual faces. He stopped on Oliver’s. “Dr. Bowen. Oliver. What does our resident starfish have to say about all this?”

“He stopped communicating with me after Easter Island.”

“Probably smart of it,” President Wood said. He resumed his scan of the room. “So? Does anyone want to voice an objection? What do we risk by having them fight now, besides affording them less time to train?”

Evidently no one could think of objections. The Luyten were clearly aware of the defenders and understood they were a threat. The secret was out. Given that nine facilities were now in operation, it wasn’t surprising.

“Can I make a suggestion?” Secretary of Defense Oteri asked. She was built like a bulldog—short, squat, with thinning black hair and a bulb nose. “Deploy one battalion first, so we can assess its effectiveness, maybe learn some things we can pass on to the other forces. It will take the Luyten time to mass numbers large enough to storm those facilities.”

The president shrugged, looked around the room for reaction.

“We could send the Easter Island force into Santiago,” said Wood’s brother Carmine, who was tall and extremely thin, almost skeletal. “In fact, the Algarrobo nuclear plant is only twenty miles outside Santiago. If they could retake the largest power plant in South America while securing the defender production facility in Santiago, that would be huge. We need energy. Badly.”

There were murmurs of agreement.

“We need to see what they’re capable of on a mission before we set them all loose,” Oteri added. “Once we set them loose, that’s it. They become a fully independent fighting force—allies, more than anything.”

“But if we set them loose in Santiago, aren’t we giving the Luyten a chance to learn from that encounter as well?” Secretary Nielsen asked in his customary dulcet tone. Nielsen was soft-spoken, balding, with a full reddish beard.

Ariel waved her hand and waited for the president to recognize her like a child in class. “As the Luyten mass, their communication grid breaks down. They cut themselves off from one another as their web configuration folds. Do they have electronic communication?”

“Not much,” Oteri said. “They have some they seized from us that they use to communicate across oceans and deserts and so on, but they don’t have the capability to transmit visual recordings of a battle, or detailed schematics. They’re used to passing information instantaneously, through their telepathic network.”

Wood took a deep breath, let it out. “All right. I’ll send a recommendation to Premier Chandar that we launch an attack on Santiago and the Algarrobo nuclear plant as soon as possible.” Since the president was the World Alliance’s minister of defense, it seemed certain the premier would go along with his recommendation.